Hardware

About our Hardware

Professionally designed and built, our servers are tailored to perform their unique tasks. Built on server-grade components, such as Intel Xeon Nehalem processors, registered ECC memory, and SAS hard drives (connected to Adaptec RAID controllers), our servers are built to outperform and outlast even our own expectations.

We own and custom build all of the servers that we use. We feel that the quality and craftsmanship that goes into selecting the server components and putting them together is reflected in our service levels. All of our servers run a custom tuned version of the FreeBSD kernel.

Our servers are unique in that they are specialized to perform only one task. We have two main classes of servers: Voice servers, which are used to process and route all of the incoming voice traffic, and database servers, which are responsible for storing all of the configuration information such as channels and Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Voice Servers

Arguably the most important server class for us is that of our voice servers. These servers are responsible for receiving, processing, and routing all voice traffic. On top of that, they are also the gatekeepers for enforcing ACLs and server security. Thus, they have a high CPU and memory requirement, but do not need to write to disk very often.

Accordingly, extraordinary attention is paid to the CPU, motherboard, and memory selection. Our current generation of servers utilize the Gainestown microarchitecture, to take advantage of the three memory channels and dual 6.4GT/s Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) interfaces.

Our voice servers are not loaded beyond 50%. We do this so that in the unlikely event of a complete hardware failure on another server, all customers could immediately be migrated off the failed server and onto a working one, while the failed server is repaired. This process happens automatically (including IP address re-assignment), which keeps downtime to less than a few minutes.

Database Servers

Our database servers run MySQL, and are custom tuned to run it extraordinarily well. These servers currently run MySql using Replication, to ensure high availability. We use the fastest SAS hard drives in a RAID 10 configuration. This RAID level allows us to achieve extremely high levels of performance, and gives us another level of redundancy.